IN THE FIRST PART ON THIS BLOG I ATTEMPTED TO SHOW THAT TECHNOLOGY IS CHANGING THE WAY WE VIEW DEMOCRACY AND AS A CONSEQUENCE POLITICAL PARTIES WILL OR ARE BECOMING OBSOLETE.

For those of us who still think that because we support a particular party AND that it will deliver on its pre-election promises I can only say we are living in cloud cuckoo land.

Governance use to be understood as ‘a system of values, policies and institutions by which a society manages its economic, political and social affairs through interaction within and among the State, civil society and the private sector.

This for now holds true for the most part but it is changing as we enter the Technology Revolution.

Why?

BECAUSE MOST SOCIETIES ARE NOW A MIX OF SEVERAL CULTURES DRIVEN BY A WORLD MEDIA THAT HAS TURNED EVERY FORM OF GREED AND VIOLENCE INTO AN ENTERTAINMENT.

POLITICIANS ARE NO LONGER CAPABLE OF REPRESENTING THE PEOPLE WHO VOTE FOR THEM.

THERE IS NO LONGER ANY LONG TERM PLANNING ONLY KNEE JERK REACTIONS.

INDEED WHEN IT COMES DOWN TO THE BEAR TRUTH- THEY ARE ALL DRIVEN BY DATA ON THE ECONOMY, AND MANIPULATED BY BIG MONEY OR THE LACK THEREOF.

Where does this leave us.

Just look at the current USA presidential election. Two candidate that are viewed as a threat to world peace.

There is an urgent need not just in the United States to invest in cultural diversity and dialogue.

Culture is increasingly recognized as a cross-cutting dimension of the three economic, social and environmental pillars of sustainability.

We must strengthen social cohesion and provide sources of inspiration for renewing forms of democratic governance if we are to put a break on governance for the sake of money rather than for the values we all cherish.

We must places more emphasis on ‘unity in diversity.’

Indigenous knowledge can direct us towards more sustainable modes of living.

Similarly, ignoring the increasingly multicultural makeup of societies would amount to negating the existence of large sections of the population, which compartmentalizes society and damages the social fabric by creating competition between the different communities over access to resources (for education, health, social services) rather than promoting a sense of solidarity.

The expansion of digital networks, for example, has sometimes helped to revitalize endangered or even extinct languages; and the development of new technologies has greatly increased the possibilities of communicating and exchanging cultural content in time and space. Moreover, in certain cultural contexts, global cities in particular, the varied cultural flows and sometimes unexpected encounters produced by globalization are reflected in a growing range of consumer habits and trends.

You might ask why more emphasis on ‘unity in diversity.

Because Cultural diversity, characterized as it is by space-time compression linked to the speed of new communication and transportation technologies, and by the growing complexity of social interactions and the increasing overlap of individual and collective identities — cultural diversity has become a key concern, amid accelerating globalization processes, as a resource to be preserved and as a lever for sustainable development.

Intercultural dialogue must be seen as a complex and ongoing process that is never completed.

Unfortunately Globalization is NOT ACHIEVING THIS but is leading inevitably to cultural homogenization. Facebook, Twitter, Linked In etc.

While it is true that globalization induces forms of homogenization and standardization, it cannot be regarded as inimical to human creativity, which continues to engender new forms of diversity, constituting a perennial challenge to featureless uniformity.

Digital technology has drastically changed the modes of producing and disseminating cultural products, and cultural industries that previously were kept separate by analogue systems of production (film, television, photography and printing) have now converged.

We can’t hold a computer program like Google hostage to our demands.

We must move away from elite level deal making by allowing diverse interests to influence and design our own debating and decision-making rules.

Take for instance the eradication of world poverty, which is an intolerable violation of human rights in terms of both the hardships and the loss of dignity it causes – must be approached in terms of each specific social and cultural setting.

No amount of money is going to make any long-term worthwhile difference.

This can only be done with massive investment in Education.

Without education we are blowing in the wind, because rights and freedoms are exercised in very varied cultural environments and all have a cultural dimension that needs to be acknowledged so as to ensure their effective integration in different cultural contexts.

Education is a fundamental human right to which all children and adults should have access, contributing as it does to individual freedom and empowerment, and to human development.

We must escape National dialogues and engage in collective world mandates, that have legal status, and are independence from the government.

We must re- invent the United Nations changing it from a gossip shop on world problems to an Organisation that is fully funded with total transparency.

Irrivalent of the changes in technology quit hoc resolutions diplomacy is not enough.

Human beings relate to one another through society, and express that relationship through culture.

New technologies have not yet rendered the older technologies obsolete.

If we are to respond to the challenges inherent in a culturally diverse world, we must develop new approaches to intercultural dialogue, approaches that go beyond the limitations of the ‘dialogue among civilizations’ paradigm. Too often, dialogue events have stressed collective identities (national, ethnic, religious) rather than identities of individuals or social groups.

We must ensure a level playing field for cultural encounters and guaranteeing equality of status and dignity between all participants in initiatives to promote intercultural dialogue involve recognizing the ethnocentric ways in which certain cultures have hitherto proceeded.

The founding Vetoes in the United Nations must be scraped by give all nations an equal voice.

While virtually all human activities are shaped by and in turn help to shape cultural diversity, the prospects for the continued vitality of diversity are crucially bound up with the future of languages, education, the communication of cultural content, and the complex interface between creativity and the marketplace.

Recent decades have witnessed an unprecedented enmeshment of national economies and cultural expressions, giving rise to new challenges and opportunities.

The emergence of genuine ‘knowledge societies’ implies a diversity of forms of knowledge and of its sources of production, We are creating Internet technological Sahara Deserts that are and will drive millions to seek a better life or wars.

Communication networks have shrunk or abolished distance, to the benefit of some and the exclusion of others.

To address the problems that derive from the grotesque inequalities and structural poverty of our world which is at the foundations of 90% of the mess we now find ourselves in. We must recognise that successful intercultural dialogue lies in the acknowledgement of the equal dignity of the participants… based on the premise that all cultures are in continual evolution and are the result of multiple influences throughout history.

All rights and freedoms have a cultural dimension that contributes to their effective exercise. It is precisely this dimension that forms the link between the individual, the community and the group, which grounds universal values within a particular society.

All communities do not experience and respond to phenomena such as globalization in the same way.

As migration flows have intensified with globalization, they have significantly modified the ethno-linguistic makeup of a number of countries and have created new linguistic and translation needs, especially in administrative, legal and medical circuits worldwide.

Characterized as it is by space-time compression linked to the speed of new communication and transportation technologies, and by the growing complexity of social interactions and the increasing overlap of individual and collective identities — cultural diversity has become a key concern, amid accelerating globalization processes, as a resource to be preserved and as a lever for sustainable development.

Finally, forms of democratic governance can be renewed by deriving lessons from the different models adopted by diverse cultures.

We the people of the world must make our collective voices heard which is becoming almost impossible due to all of the above.

If we don’t want to rule by

AI has officially made its way into Google’s search algorithm.

(The artificial intelligence of RankBrain comes in the form of mathematical entities called vectors that can be understood by computers. When presented with an unfamiliar word, RankBrain will help formulate a guess at what the query was about and filter accordingly.)

There are many possibilities as to how Rank Brain could work into being a signal to direct your choice to making any decision.

Central to the many problems arising in this context is the Western ideology of knowledge transparency, which cannot do justice to systems of thought recognizing both ‘exoteric’ and ‘esoteric’ knowledge and embodying initiatory processes for crossing the boundaries between them.

Diversity of traditions and cultures has for centuries been one of Europe’s riches and that the principle of tolerance is the guarantee of the maintenance in Europe of an open society.

Take England’s recent referendum on the EU.

So far the English referendum has resulted in transitional period now represented by an unelected interim governments whose authority to press the out button and start negotiations to leave may lack legitimacy in the eyes of the public.

Political transitions are tumultuous processes that celebrate advances and suffer setbacks several times before they can conclude with a new, widely accepted constitutional order.

There is a whole new class of millionaires as the new generation takes control of banks, government, and other institutions. The stage is set for another depression and the collapse of the welfare state.

How this can be achieved I leave to you to suggest.

But I am convinced that with the smart phone we should create a new political platform where the voice of people would hold weight in decision taken by our political masters.

If every eligible voting age citizen had a phone, any project that cost over x billions could be electronically sent for approval or disapproval.

As how to finance the United Nations ( see previous post : A World Aid Commission)